Lack of Vitamin D Results in Pregnancy Complications
A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism showed that the lack of vitamin D increased the risk of pre-eclampsia, a condition known to cause high blood pressure and swelling of the hands and feet, in pregnant women by five-folds. Pre-ecalmpsia, also known as toxemia affects nearly 7 percent of the women in their first pregnancies and can often worsen into the fatal condition known as eclampsia. Eclampsia attacks the internal organs, such as the liver and lungs and unfortunately accounts for up to 70 percent of the maternal deaths in developing countries. Lisa Bodnar, the lead author of the study, and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health Sciences examined the levels of vitamin D in women who had pre-eclampsia with women who didn’t. They found women with lower levels of vitamin D (less than 37.5 nanomoles) had five times the risk of developing pre-eclampsia. The surprising fact was most of these women were taking prenatal vitamins, containing 200 to 400 international units (IUs) of vitamin D. However, Bodnar explains that experts believe pregnant women should be taking 1,000 IUs of vitamin D per day to help increase their vitamin levels.
Source: The Seattle Times
September 14, 2007
Depression Links Correlates With Smoking During Pregnancy
A study published April’s 2007 issue of the Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded that pregnant smokers were three times more likely to develop a mental disorder than non-smokers. The study also found that about 22 percent of the 1,500 pregnant women in the study, smoked at some point of their pregnancy, and 12 percent were nicotine-dependent. The majority of the pregnant smokers also suffered from depression, whether nicotine-dependent or not.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse., told AP/Yahoo News that nicotine and other chemicals in cigarette smoke may work as mild anti-depressants in the brain. So, women “are not just smoking to get the habit-forming aspects ... they are seeking the therapeutic effect.”
Kaisernetwork.org
September 14, 2007
Benefits of Meditation During Pregnancy
Pregnancy for some women can be quite joyful and uneventful, as they sail through the nine months to the delivery room. However some women experience pain and aches, constant bathroom urges, and a load of stress throughout their pregnancy, causing a handful of these overwhelmed moms-to-be to turn to mediation to alleviate stress and the awful symptoms of stress. Mediation teacher, Sardasimran Kaur explains that mediation can simply mean closing your eyes and listening to yourself slowly breathe. In and out.
Mediation is shown to lower blood pressure, heart rate, breathing and metabolism, leading to a peaceful state of mind, says Dr. Herbert Benson, the Institute Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard. He also notes that mediation can come in handy during labor to relax the muscles.
Rosa Walsh is just one of the women who started mediating when her work left her feeling hopelessly stressed out. "It helped me so much with the stress level in my job that I started doing it with my first pregnancy," says Walsh who’s now expecting her second child.
A number of studies have shown that stress during pregnancy can lead to low birth weight and attention issues.
